Addicting Victory
by Catching Fireflies
Summary: The morphling addicts. That's what everyone knows the District Six tributes to be in the 75th Games. But there's more to them than just drug addiction. There's the agony from the arena that made them turn to morphling in the first place to dull the pain. This is the story of the so-called 'female morphling'. No longer a one-shot!
1. Addicting Victory

**Hey, guys! I've been reading a whole lot of songfics lately, and I've also been listening to some songs by Eminem that involve drug use. (You can probably tell that if you've been reading two of my other stories, This Is Prim and A Deadly Spark.) Besides, I've always thought that the morphlings from District Six deserve some recognition. So this is the result. Also, I made up the 'morphling pills' for one of my stories, This Is Prim. Like it says in the summary, this is not a songfic. I'm just saying what this was inspired from. Also, I don't own the song excerpt from "Drug Ballad" by Eminem that I'm using for an introduction. Enjoy! Tell me what you think! :)**

_'Cause every time I try to go to leave_

_Someone keeps pullin' on my sleeve_

_I don't wanna but I gotta stay_

_These drugs really got a hold of me_

_- "Drug Ballad" by Eminem_

**Addicting Victory**

It's been a while since I got back to District Six after my Games. Somewhere after the district's victory celebrations have died down, and somewhere before my Victory Tour. I don't exactly keep track of how much time is going past. It's days, though. Weeks. Really, I don't fucking care. I don't give a fuck. I'm just sick of waking up every damn night to nightmares about the arena. I'm so sick of seeing the faces of the dead tributes every night. So now I'm barely sleeping at all. Now I stay up.

Hunter, my mentor, taught me the supposedly 'complex' art of getting high. He lives next door to me. I remember the Games, when he teased me all the time. Like I could help it. But now, he's more sympathetic to my pain. He's the one who introduced me to the drug-dealing operation of the district. And man, it's like I'm very slowly setting fire to my piles of victory money. The stuff I'm getting is fucking strong. Okay, so it's only prescription drugs stolen from the Capitol and the local doctors, but oh, well. It's enough for me when I get the good stuff. Morphling. Hunter kept blabbering on about how good it was, so I decided to try some, too. In the Capitol and the fancy places, they've got it in the form that it can be drank or taken like a normal shot, but here in the districts, we stick to the slightly cheaper pills.

I stare up at the ceiling of my bedroom hazily, lying on my bed. I barely have any desire to get up, but then I remember. I'm out of morphling... shit! I leap out of bed as best as I can in my blurry state, scrambling down the stairs, tripping. Good thing I got my two hours of sleep in my clothes. I pull a rain jacket on over my shirt, zipping it up the front and pulling up the hood. I try to pass the kitchen without my father hearing me. I'm suddenly glad that my mother left him. One less person to worry about.

Shit, my father sees me walking out the door. "Alexia!" he says. There's a really good smell coming from the kitchen. "I made breakfast, sweetie, want any?" I sniff. Mm, smells like he made muffins or something. After all, his grandmother was the best baker in District Six before she died.

"No," I say, shoving a handful of money in my rain jacket pocket. "I'm going to go to the market with Hunter. You trust him, right?" Okay, I know that Dad doesn't trust Hunter at all. Hunter's a drug addict, and his guiding and my victory are pushing me along the same path that he took.

Wrong question. "No, actually, Alexia, I don't!" he says forcefully. "You're my daughter, and I don't want you turning into a drug addict like him. Look at you." He washes his hands in the sink. "Lexi, honey, look at you. You're already hooked on that morphling stuff. You look awful. It's killing you, you know that? And you're addicted. You spend so much time with Hunter... are you sleeping with him?" he asks out of the blue.

_"Dad!"_ I yell. That's disgusting. My drug-addict mentor. "He's twenty-nine years old, and I'm seventeen! That's perverted! You're confusing rapist and victor." I open the door again, rain pounding the sidewalk. "I'm going. You can't stop me."

My father's face hardens. "Fine," he says indifferently. It's like a stab in my heart to hear him say it like that. "Fine. Go off and get high on prescription drugs and black-market morphling. Have a good time killing yourself." I stand there for a second, staring blankly at him. "What are you waiting for?" he says coldly. "Go. I don't know what's getting into you, but I know that the daughter I used to have would never act like this."

I nod numbly and run out the door into the rain, slipping on the steps. I run next door and bang on Hunter's door until he answers. His eyes are crossed a little, and he doesn't look like he's got much motor control. Yeah, I'll bet he's already high. But he's the only person who understands me now. His face is unshaven, with prickly brown stubble, and his eyes have heavy dark circles underneath. He probably hasn't slept in days. "Hey," I say. "Want to go to the market and get some more morphling? I'm out."

He laughs, giving me a big hug. It's clear that he hasn't washed in a while, since he stinks like sweat. "You burn right through those pills," he says with a laugh. "All right, I'll get a jacket on." He grabs a dirty jacket and pulls it on. "C'mon, sexy Lexi," he says with a smirk. I punch him in the shoulder playfully with a grin. "Race you, Alex!" he says, and we race down the rainy streets, splashing in the puddles like excited little kids.

Except kids don't usually get so excited about getting high like we are.

When we get to the alleys, we slow down. Hunter's slower than me by a lot, since he's been an addict ever since he was a fifteen-year-old victor, but I slow down for him. We get out our money, and Hunter and I wait for the dealers to come. Sure, District Six doesn't exactly have a spotless operation, but it's good enough for me. I hope I can carry all the bottles of morphling pills.

One of the dealers comes out of the shadows. "Hey, victors," he greets. He's lugging some cases of pill bottles. "You want some morphling pills?" We both nod. Hunter only gets three bottles, since he's got a stash at home, but I get ten. Sure, it costs me so much that all I've got is some loose change in my pocket, but I don't care. I stuff the bottles into my pockets, and we walk back to our homes without a single word passing between us.

I don't pay attention to my dad when I walk inside. I run up to my room, dumping the bottles of morphling pills on the bed as I pull off my jacket and throw it on the floor, letting the rain drip on my carpet. I pull the grate off of the air conditioner and stick all but one of my pill bottles into a little stashing place that I made. Dad still hasn't found it. I grin.

Then I go into the bathroom and slam the door shut. I run the hot water in my bathtub and open the pill bottle. I take pill after pill, until I feel sick to my stomach and my head's blurry and spinning. Somehow, I end up soaking in the burning hot water of my bathtub, collapsed in the tub and taking more morphling. I've still got all my clothes on, and they stick to my skin. I wait patiently as the pain and the nightmares burn away into nothing and fog and haze that prevents me from seeing the bad stuff.

Later, sometime in the afternoon, I'm still there. And my father opens the door to see me half-asleep and high, almost drowning in my bathtub, all of my clothes on. And the last thing I hear is this -or maybe I'm imagining it, maybe I'm just high...

_"They're going to know you as the drug addict victor from District Six forever."_


	2. Evening Nightmares

**Hey! I know that I said that this was going to be a one-shot, but guess what? I felt inspired to get an actual plot out of this, since it literally has less than thirty total views and I want people to read this and enjoy it. Also, this is good practice for a sequel to a fanfic that I just finished. This chapter is basically a nightmare/flashback that Alexia has when she is high and passed out. And thanks to Anarchy Girl for reviewing. Lastly, I don't own the Hunger Games trilogy or my introduction song excerpt, "3 a.m." by Eminem. :)**

_It's 3 a.m. in the mornin'_

_Put my key in the door and_

_Bodies layin' all over the floor and_

_I don't remember how they got there_

_but I guess I musta killed 'em, killed 'em_

_- "3 a.m." by Eminem_

**Evening Nightmares**

The morphling pills take me back to the arena again. I go there almost every time I pass out or fall asleep. I remember exactly how it looks. The arena of the fifty-ninth annual Hunger Games. A frozen tundra, filled with ice but no snow, nothing but shrubs and grass and wolf muttations that looked like regular wolves, only about three times as big. It was almost all flat, with a few ravines and some springs with lukewarm water. And I'm back. I'm back in the nightmare arena world again.

I'm running across the frozen fields, my boots pounding the packed earth and squashing the grass. Immediately, I've got this sense that I know exactly what is about to happen. And I do. I look back for a second, and there's the alliance. The boy from District Eleven, the girl from District Five, and the boy from District Seven. All of the final four tributes gathered together in one place. For a second, we're all just staring at each other. The three of them are standing there together, staring at me like we're on different sides of a break in the earth, and none of us can jump the chasm. Especially not me. I'm just the girl from District Six, with my greasy blond braid down my back and wide hazel eyes. And even though they're not the Careers, they managed to kill the Careers, and they're stronger than me. It's luck that I've made it this far.

"What's the matter, cat got your tongue?" mocks the boy from Seven. I don't answer, my hands clenched into fists. I wish I had a weapon. I wish I could fucking _run away _for once in my pitiful life. But I can't. There's barely any light to see them by, anyway. It must be after midnight by now. I can just see their silhouettes and the glints of their eyes. I hear the crunch of frozen grass being stepped on, and then see them getting closer to me. And the shine of three knives being raised.

I dodge as the girl lowers her knife, and I end up knocking someone else to the ground. There's a burst of someone spewing profanity, and I manage to pin down one of the others. My hands hold down their arms, and I stand up quickly, releasing them for a moment as I plant a boot on the boy's chest. I don't even know what I'm doing. I just know that something's happening, and I'm going to look back on it later and go, _what the fuck am I doing?_ But I use my free foot to stomp down, and it connects with his head. I hear bone crunching, and there's a horrible scream. Something wet and slippery -blood, brains, flesh, eyes?- soaks my boot. And then there's the cannon.

A knife swings at me, burying itself into my arm. This time, I'm not quite as quick. I stare at the wound for a second as the girl makes a run for it and the boy from Seven watches me with a wicked grin. Pain sears through my arm, but I pull the knife out and hold it tightly. My own blood drips down my arm and down the knife, and the dead boy from Eleven's blood soaks my shoe. The girl's already far away... shit. But the boy's right there. I hold up the knife and smile winningly, then wink and start chasing him around the fields. It's like a game of tag. Except much higher stakes. My legs pump, my body flying across the landscape like a paintbrush across a canvas. I'm the paintbrush, leaving a streak of bright red blood behind me, painting the grass.

Then I somehow catch up to him, and I leap on him when I'm about a foot behind him. I jump on his back and he goes sprawling to the ground, me on top of him. My knees are locked around his chest, and then I plunge the knife through his head. It goes in on his scalp, and the tip comes out of his left eye. He barely can scream, but there's no one who can save him. I pull the knife out as his cannon fires, standing up again.

Shit. The girl from Five is nowhere to be seen. But there's a patch of trees nearby, and I'm pretty sure that she went there to take cover. I grin and creep through the fields, careful never to make any noise. I'm sure that tension is building up in the viewers by now. And now I'm at the edge of the trees. My breathing is shallow, clouds of white coming out of my mouth from the cold air. I wrap my jacket tightly around me, shivering slightly, raising my stolen knife. And I creep into the trees, staying out of the patches of moonlight, listening and watching, waiting. Waiting so fucking patiently to kill her.

Then I see her. She's standing there, leaning against a tree, not facing me, staring in the opposite direction. She doesn't see or hear me, and my mouth twists into a smile. I tiptoe forward, raising my knife. She still doesn't notice me. But at the last second, my foot goes down on a stick, and I hear a sharp crack. Shit. This is it now. As she whips her head around, her eyes widening in fear, I reach around the tree, twisting her head around so she can't see me, holding her to the tree with one arm. And with the other arm, I stab through her eye.

_Boom._ And that's her cannon. So now I'm the victor.

And that's when I come to my senses... what the fuck did I just do?


End file.
